


and so our feet go onward

by HereComeDatBoi



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (eventually) - Freeform, Adoption, Angst with a Happy Ending, Divorce, Friendship, Gen, Getting Back Together, M/M, Married Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Mild Angst, Parenthood, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Post-Divorce, adashi babies, can't be forgetting that lol, discussion of sexuality, platonic marriage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 13:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21410812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereComeDatBoi/pseuds/HereComeDatBoi
Summary: “Marry you?” Adam blinked at her. “But Lata, I’m not in love with you. And you’re not in love with me.”“I don’t want to be single when I’m thirty. Life tends to get dull around here when you make it to twenty-seven without being married,” she shrugged. “You’re my best friend, we’ll make it work. And you’re lonely too, aren’t you? Ever since your pilot died, you haven’t looked at anyone.”That much was true, at least. He hadn't looked at anyone since Takashi, and he probably never would."You're right," he heard himself say. "I'll do it."In a reality where the Atlas was never launched and Sendak died under questioning, Adam's life during the war turns out a little differently.Luckily for him, some things--and some people--stay the same.
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Past Adam/Original Female Character(s) (Voltron)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	and so our feet go onward

_ “Marry you?” Adam blinked at her, dropping his jacket onto the floor as she crossed her arms and looked at him beseechingly—with a kind of plea she was far too proud to voice, though she seemed determined to make it known somehow. “But Lata, I’m not in love with you. And you’re not in love with me.” _

_ “I don’t want to be single when I’m thirty. Life tends to be dull around here when you make it to twenty-seven without being married,” she shrugged. “You’re my best friend, we’ll make it work. And you’re lonely too, aren’t you? Ever since your pilot died, you haven’t looked at anyone.” _

_ She had been right, of course. He  _ was  _ lonely, lonely for Takashi and Matt and Keith and the life he built at the Garrison—the life that was irrevocably gone, now that the rest of the universe had stolen everyone he loved.  _

_ “Yes,” he heard himself say, far-off and foreign as if the words had fallen from someone else’s mouth. “Let’s do it, I—I can’t be alone anymore, Lata, it's  killing me—” _

* * *

The first year of their marriage went as smoothly as an old song, and even decades later Adam could find no fault with it. He and Lata took an eight-month leave and traveled up and down the coast, sleeping in lonely inns by night and hiking through mountains and beaches by day. They saw more of the country than they had ever hoped to before their wedding, and after their extended honeymoon was over Adam went back to his deployment in the north—until an accident in a minefield left his right leg so badly mangled that he was sent away to recover, and kept him from returning to active duty even after he was well enough to walk without a crutch again. 

“That leg’s never going to be what it was, Walia,” one of the doctors told him, examining the X-ray Adam had taken earlier that day. Adam couldn’t exactly tell what was wrong with it from the scan, but he hardly needed to; his leg shook like a leaf when he was tired. and tended to buckle and send him crashing to the floor once or twice a week. It had been months since the last surgery, and those particular symptoms had barely improved at all. 

“So that’s it? I won’t be of any good in the field?”

“Most likely. I guess your superiors could see about getting you a low-risk M.I. position, but I don’t think they’ll want to risk it. You got married about a year ago, didn’t you? Go home to your wife and adjust to civilian life again for at least a few more years, Adam. We can try the fourth surgery by December, but I doubt it’ll fix enough to get you back on the front.”

So Adam went home with a limp and a medal and greeted Lata at the airport with a bear-hug that almost knocked her off her feet, both glad to return to the village where he was born and sorrowful that he had come back as a cripple; although his leg functioned well enough there were bad days now and then, and he had not expected his wife to be particularly happy about it. 

But Lata did not seem to mind it at all, and they settled back into their old lives as if he had never been away. 

* * *

In the second year, Lata brought up the question of children. Adam kissed her forehead over the kitchen island and wondered aloud how long the adoption process would take, only to stop in his tracks as a tear trickled down Lata’s face.

“What’s the matter,  _ rani? _ ” he said, taking her hands in his. “I thought you wanted—”

She swallowed. “There’s nothing  _ wrong  _ with adoption, but I—I thought we would have children of our own, you never said—”

“Oh! Oh, Latika, of course—I wouldn’t deny you that, never. We’ll go to the clinic in the city, and…”

Adam paused. 

‘I’ve said something wrong again, haven’t I?”

“No,” Lata murmured, putting down the tomato she was holding and dropping her knife into the sink. “Not if you have to ask, you didn’t. It’s okay, Adam. It’s fine.”

She asked Adam to sleep at his grandfather’s house later in the evening, and when he turned up on the well-worn doorstep with a pair of pajamas in his arms his aunt stood aside to let him in with a frown and a knowing sigh. 

“Fights like this never last long,” she told him. “You’ll be back home tomorrow.”

“Maybe I won’t,” Adam replied, still completely bewildered. “I said something I shouldn’t have, and I don’t even know what.”

Uma burst into laughter. “All husbands feel the same way when their wives get angry,  _ beta.  _ The key is finding out what it was, and then never doing it again.”

“That sounds simple enough, I guess? I’ll just apologize tomorrow, and...and fix it, so Latika feels better.”

“Go to bed, sweetheart. You can figure out how you’re going to apologize in the morning.”

Adam did apologize when he went back the next day for breakfast, and Lata forgave him as Uma had promised she would. But there was no more talk of the clinic in Ahmedabad, or of biological children, and when they put in a request at the local orphanage to be approved as adoptive parents Lata seemed perfectly happy with their decision. 

“Are you happy,  _ meri rani _ ?” he whispered, on the first night they shared a bed with their daughter fast asleep between them. “I don’t—I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.”

Lata put a hand on the baby’s soft brown cheek and shook her head, tracing the perfect little features with her thumb as Asha rolled closer to Adam. Her face fell just for a hundredth of a second before she smiled again, reaching out for Adam’s hand and holding it tight like a lifeline. 

“Neither have I.”

* * *

It wasn’t until the third year that things changed a little. 

Adam didn’t notice it happening, at first. Lata began staying later and later at work every night, and her absent-minded husband thought only in terms of Asha’s wellbeing and saw absolutely nothing strange about it. Lata had never been knacky with babies or housework anyway, and since Adam was used to looking after his younger cousin and helping in Uma’s kitchen it was only natural that he cleaned and cooked the meals and carried Asha out for walks in the evenings when her crying kept her mother from getting some well-earned sleep. 

“I didn’t understand you, when you said you loved me,” Lata observed over breakfast one morning, watching Adam feed their daughter with a bit of mashed squash. “I think I do now.”

“What do you mean?”

“You make sure I go to bed early enough to get to the office in time, always. And you’ve barely slept in weeks,” she said sadly. “I could never do that,  _ janu _ . Or wake up early to make omelets because you needed something better than toast to eat. I’d just let you have the toast.”

“We both find the best fit for us, Latika,” Adam said, pausing to spoon another helping of fried potatoes into her plate. “You’re thriving at work, so that’s where you need to be. And I’m getting along fine here with my software and taking care of Asha, so it all works out. Right?”

“I guess it does.”

* * *

And a few months later, everything changed completely. 

* * *

“Lata— _ Latika _ —I don’t understand! We were so happy, what—”

“I want something you can’t give me,  _ janu.  _ I want a  _ full  _ marriage, not this—this sham of a thing that we have. And I do love you, I always will, but you—I hoped at least we could have  _ that _ .”

“You mean—”

“ _ Yes,  _ Adam, I do. I’m a married woman, aren’t I? Couldn’t I have expected it at least once? You never even looked at me that way on our honeymoon—you just wanted to hold my hand and go beachcombing. And that would have been okay when I was sixteen, but—but after all these years you’re still just—you’re still just the little Adam Umarzai who played house with me when we were kids. You’re not my husband, you’re my friend—and I gave up everyone else who wanted me for you, gave up having a child of my own—”

“I never asked you to,” Adam said quietly, wounded to the quick as he sat on the floor with Asha snoozing in his arms. “I told you at the beginning what I could and couldn’t do. I was willing to have children with you from the first, and I told you I’d never desired anyone like that. Not you, not Takashi, no one. It wasn’t a choice,  _ rani.  _ It’s  _ never  _ been a choice. I would have tried if I could, I promise. 

“But I don’t see you any differently than I did when I was a child, and that’s never going to change. I’m not like other men, and I haven’t hidden it from you. Why are you mentioning this now?”

And then the realization came to him, so very clear and simple that he closed his eyes and sighed. 

“You were in love with me, weren’t you? You kept hoping I’d come around, but now there’s someone else in the picture. Isn't there?”

“I  _ was  _ in love with you,” Lata whispered. “Ever since the day we met—I wanted to be with you so much that I cried every night for a month when your father sent you away to school. And then you came back, after that Japanese pilot left you, and I thought—I thought you could get over him, and see me like I wanted you to see me. And I thought I could stay married to you, I really did—I didn’t know it would be so  _ hard _ , I swear it on my mother’s grave. But one of my friends from college, he moved to work in the city and I—”

“And now you want to marry him,” he replied, strangely resigned to the fact that his wife had already decided to leave him. “If you want a divorce, I won’t say no. I’ll do whatever you say, except—give me half-custody of Asha, at least. Let me have that, and I’ll agree to everything else.”

But Lata did not answer, and Adam felt his heart break in half as she glanced down at their daughter.

“The man—he doesn’t want her, does he?”

Lata shook her head. “He doesn’t.”

Adam very much doubted that Lata’s future husband was the only one that didn’t want to be a parent...to Asha, at least. Lata had been sleeping away from home more and more often in the last few weeks, and Asha never even permitted her mother to hold her when she was sick or tired. But Adam was still married to her, even if it was only in name, and regardless of how they were breaking apart he would not force her to shame herself, or her dignity—so instead he got to his feet, and pretended not to understand.

“I wouldn’t want to make things difficult for you when you’re just getting used to living with him, Lata. Or to have Asha around someone who doesn’t wholeheartedly want her when she’s still so young. Maybe we can work something out in a few years, but for now I guess I’ll just take full custody if you’re okay with that.”

She nodded, so gratefully relieved that her eyes misted over with tears. “Yes. Yes, that would work just fine.”

“I’ll have to move, then. This house is yours and your family’s, and I wouldn’t want to hurt either you or Asha because mine is just across the river. She’ll see you every day if I don’t leave the village, and I don’t want her to grow up thinking her mother abandoned her. We’ll wait until everything is figured out before you see her again.”

“I don’t think she’ll ever feel abandoned with you,” Lata whispered, hugging them both so tightly that a sob threatened to burst out of Adam’s throat. “You’re the one who fought for her. You’re the one who stayed with her when she had her surgery. You’re the one who nursed her through her colds and slept in the bed with her and read her all the stories. If she needs a mother, it’s not me she needs. I’ve  _ never  _ known a better father than you are. She’s going to be just fine.”

* * *

They had their marriage annulled on grounds of non-consummation only two months later, in the same town hall where they had their wedding almost exactly three years previously. Lata claimed that Adam had never told her he was gay, and Adam brought along copies of Takashi’s will and the marriage license he applied for before he left on the Kerberos mission. The fact that Asha was adopted was further proof; young couples in their twenties hardly ever turned to adoption unless they were having difficulty conceiving naturally, and since they had never gone to the fertility clinic or seen a doctor for anything but Adam’s old leg injury Asha was a point in their favor—as was Adam’s uncontested petition for full custody, which was granted just a day after the annulment. He had already moved all of his and Asha’s things back to his childhood home, so he and Lata said goodbye to each other just outside the courthouse after signing the custody papers. 

“I’m so sorry,” Lata wept, crying on his shoulder and clinging to Asha as a seagull screamed overhead. “I never wanted any of this, to hurt you and—”

“It’s okay,” he said gently, kissing her nose like he used to do when they were children. “Latika, you’re still one of my best friends, and that won’t change till till my dying day. And if you want to come see Asha someday, my door will always be open.”

_ “Adam...” _

“Also, I never thought I’d see the day when I had to lie about being  _ gay _ ,” he added as an afterthought, bringing something like a smile to Lata’s mouth. “Never mention that I’m pan and ace anywhere near a courthouse again, or we’re sunk.”

“I won’t,” she giggled, wiping her eyes and hailing a taxi to take her back to the train station. “I promise. But Adam, where—where will you go? If you’re not moving back home, then—”

“I’ve had other homes in my time,  _ janu.  _ Asha and I will manage. ”

* * *

Adam arrived back at the Garrison six months later, noting with a mixture of disappointment and resignation that no one was at the airport to greet him. On one hand, it probably meant that Iverson and Sanda had simply not told anyone he was coming; on the other, he would have dearly loved to see them again—them or Colleen or even Mishaal Rizavi, though he hadn’t heard from either of them in years. It was partly guilt over Katie’s disappearance that had driven him away, now that he thought about it; worse still was the fear that Colleen might have blamed him for her daughter’s loss, which had kept him far away from the Western hemisphere even when Iverson invited him to his son’s wedding last May. 

But he had Sanda and Iverson as friends, at least, and possibly Curtis and Seok-jin if neither of them had resigned their posts in the five years he spent away. Most likely Mishaal too, since her younger sister Nadia had been in the junior fighter class before his departure, and—

_ Takashi. Matt. Keith. Sam. Katie… _

He glanced down at his phone and shifted Asha in her sling, absently mouthing the words on the screen as he got his bags onto the train and thought of home once again. 

_ No one’s been in your apartment since the day you left,  _ the commander wrote to him a week before his travel arrangements were finalized.  _ All your things are still there, and I’ll send someone to tidy it up and stock it with some pasta and cereal and before you arrive.  _

“I’ll eat the pasta tomorrow, I guess,” Adam whispered, watching his daughter poke at the glass of the window as the underground slipped by beside them. “There’s a Korean place Keith used to like near the apartment, so that’s where we’ll get dinner. How do you feel about trying barbecue, starshine?”

“Good, Papa,” Asha said solemnly. She was taking more clearly every day, and had an impressive vocabulary in no less than four languages: both in English and Hindi, of course, as well as Adam’s Gujarati and Lata’s accented Telugu. That last would likely fade with time, since her father neither spoke it nor knew anyone else who did, but he supposed it hardly mattered; Asha would be spending her childhood in Arizona, and Adam would doubted she would ever need to use another language but Hindi now and then when she was older. 

“No, I’ll learn it,” he sighed, stroking her soft brown curls and making her giggle into his neck. “You know so much already, and it would be a shame for you to forget just because Lata’s not here anymore.”

At the sound of the half-familiar name, Asha put her head to one side like a curious bird and repeated it. 

“Lata?”

“Not Lata to you, honey. I mean your  _ Mam— _ ”

But then again, she  _ wasn’t _ , was she? 

“This...is going to be harder than I thought.”

Asha clapped her hands at him and squealed like a newborn piglet. “Bar-cue.”

“Well, at least one of us is in good spirits,” Adam laughed, kissing her feathery little eyebrows. “And has good sense, too. Everything else can wait until we get something to eat,  _ beti.  _ That’s a lesson you should never forget.”

“ _ Hungy,  _ Papa.”

“I know, I know. We’ll get there soon, lovebug. Don’t cry.”

“Not ky-ing.”

But Adam had been only talking to himself, as he discovered much later that night as he lay nearing sleep in the old apartment he had shared with Keith and Takashi all those years ago. 

_ I won’t cry. There’s nothing wrong, I won’t be completely alone and I won’t— _

He realized with a jolt that Takashi’s old uniform coat was still hanging where he left it on the bedpost before boarding the Theia-Selene, and sobbed into Asha’s little frock until he cried himself to sleep—not for the absence of his former wife or the home he could never return to, but only for a bright-eyed, dark-haired pilot with nothing in his voice but tenderness, with feet that were always soothingly warm when Adam crept into bed after a long evening of grading exams...with arms that cradled him close out of habit just as much as love, a love that had been so devastatingly powerful that Adam had nearly joined Takashi in death. 

Now that Adam was here, dreaming on what had been Takashi’s side of their bed, the world had never seemed so cold and lonely. 

_ I can do it—I can look after Asha and teach and work, I don’t need to cry, I don’t— _

But he did, and so he cried through his dreams until a soft knock sounded at the door at eight o’clock the next morning.


End file.
